Dancing Through All of It

By Alan Giffith <Birdman@Inwave.com>

I consider myself lucky to have encountered mental health professionals who could treat me for a major mental illness while respecting my gender issues.

By respect, I mean they did not interfere with my process of change, did not discourage that process, yet they remained aware of the stresses that arose and helped me handle those. I am diagnosed with bipolar disorder, previously known as manic-depressive syndrome, and have experienced decades of mood swings that included periods with symptoms of psychosis, some of these periods lasting years. The serious episodes resulted in unemployment and disability, and poverty. I feel doubly lucky that I found excellent mental health care without insurance or money. This help primarily came from local agencies designed to help low-income people. I even feel lucky I was "crazy" enough and poor enough to qualify for such help.

Those care givers without background in gender issues never presumed to be even knowledgeable. I provided them with literature and contacts to introduce them to gender issues and they readily accepted this information. Likewise, physicians had to be informed about the basics of hormone therapy as I moved from treatment by a doctor living in another state to local health care. Developing local resources is a journey in itself and anyone who has gone through it knows the value of finding someone who has already taken this path. Finding a supportive counselor, or a gender self-help group, is crucial because that inevitably leads to referrals. A sensitive and open-minded counselor will know other professionals likely to be accepting.

One of my counselors attended, at my invitation, a transgender conference and workshop for FTMs. She later treated others undergoing gender reassignment. Finding such willing professionals has been a matter of luck and a matter of educating those who are open minded. Educating those who are supposed to help you can be awkward and difficult, especially in times of depression, but it is, more often than not, necessary. That there are health care professionals willing to be educated about gender treatment is what's important until society reaches the day of greater consciousness.

I was already well underway in transition as I developed local resources. I do not know how already appearing male and sounding male affected my ability to find care givers. I did explore local possibilities asking specifically for counselors who could work with someone transgendered. I did not experience rejection. I was following through on referrals from professionals already involved in my health care. I stayed with professionals in the gender field through the early stages of transition and this part of the process was slowed by financial limitations. I did receive discounts from some gender specialists.

The biggest limitation on my gender transition due to bipolarity was my own choice to delay making a decision to transition while I was experiencing psychotic symptoms. I did not trust my own mind; I did not feel well enough to proceed. I waited two years for my symptoms to subside and to be able to work again and have financial resources. When I finally was able to work again, I found a job in a mental health field, readily open about the bipolar disorder. About nine months into the job, I was ready for hormone therapy and informed my supervisors of my upcoming transition. Four months later I was fired. It was impossible to document that my gender transition was why I was fired. I did file a workers' compensation action which dragged on for five years and which I let fall by the wayside. By the time a hearing was actually scheduled, I had greater concern about publicity and notoriety than about the slim to nothing chance of actually being found injured on the job.

I have been fired from the last three jobs I have held. In each of these instances, the gender issues played the primary role, each firing occuring within two-four months of people on the job finding out about my gender history. Again, in each instance, I was without recourse legally. In each case, my being fired was followed by onset of psychosis. It is my observation that a main ingredient in my breaks with reality was having to confront yet again the exposure of gender identity issues. To me, these issues are private and medical.

Each time I made significant strides in stabilizing, both financially and emotionally, I lost employment, then subsequently lost my savings. In my transition process this also meant delaying chest surgery due to the financial losses. This entailed another two-year wait while regaining the mental well-being to be able to work and to save money for surgery. Those years I learned the meaning of anguish.

It is not the gender issues themselves which have proved debilitating but the societal prejudice and discrimination resulting from the gender issues becoming known. I find it hard to blame people because of their ignorance, even an ignorance that is institutionalized. I believe that without bipolar disorder, I may have been able to handle differently the situations in which I was fired from jobs. I don't believe that legal action would have probably been successful but I do believe it may have helped pave the way to help others in the future in similar circumstances.

For me there has been a dynamic interplay between gender issues and bipolar disorder. Transition timelines were changed due to bipolar experiences involving thought disorder, due to reasoning in a time of unreason. Bipolar swings got a push from the terrible stress that resulted from major losses arising in the ignorance and prejudice surrounding gender issues.

Likewise, my life is characterized by simultaneously learning to cope with bipolar disorder, with anxiety, with paranoia, with voices, and learning to fully actualize my identity. These challenges cannot be legislated away, medicated out of existence, or resolved once and for all.

I like to imagine a day when someone will be able to describe how a mental illness affected gender reassignment, when gender reassignment itself is seen as something rather ordinary. When people think, "Oh, yeah. There are some people like that."

For others who face multiple psychological issues, I say ask for help sooner rather than later. Keep asking until the answers fit. Be willing to try medications. They can perform miracles. Forget suicide; I think the anguish continues anyway. Learn stress reduction and use it always. And, you may think I'm kidding on this one, but I'm not: Dance. Every day. Dance through all of it.